The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the draft of the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill that is to be tabled in Parliament during the upcoming monsoon session. The Prime Minister and the judiciary have been excluded from the ambit of the Lokpal Bill. According to this draft, the body will have a chairperson and eight members, including four judicial members. Information minister Ambika Soni said the chairperson would be a serving or retired Supreme Court...

It was the end of a long, tiring and humid day. Sitting near the bamboo gate of his 'precious' betel vineyard, 70-year-old Narayan Mandal said despondently, "I don't want to migrate, once again." Mandal, a resident of Gobindpur village in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district, is one of the many opposing the state government's ambitious $12 billion Posco steel project. For the last six years, three gram panchayats - Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gada...

-BBC   India will set up an environment regulator to bring in a "complete change" in the process of granting clearances for industries. PM Manmohan Singh said the regulator would also ensure the compliance of "green norms" by industry. India's environment ministry has been often embroiled in controversy over how to balance development with the preservation of the environment. This has led to the delay of a number of projects across the country. Announcing the...

Bangalore : Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, currently holidaying in Mauritius, is among a slew of politicians set to be named in a damning Lokayukta report on the illegal plunder of Karnataka’s iron ore resources over the decade. Cutting across party lines, the 8,000-page report also names the Reddy brothers of Bellary, Congress Rajya Sabha MP Anil Lad, former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy and BJP MLA Anand Singh. While it...

Kalinganagar/Gobindpur: Tata Steel and Posco conceived their high-profile projects in Orissa at around the same time— 2004-05. Both faced similar opposition from land owners and saw long delays in meeting schedules. Tata Steel’s plant is under way with a commissioning deadline of October 2013, while Posco is still stuck at the land-acquisition stage. Nobody really knows when construction will start. In the land-acquisition process—the biggest stumbling block for most new plants—Tata Steel...